Improved sensitivity roll-off in dual reference, buffered spectral-domain optical coherence tomography
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Updated: Nov 17, 2025
Doppler Optical Coherence Tomography of Retinal Circulation
Published on: September 18, 2012
David O Otuya1, Yogesh Verma1, Romain Luu1
1Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Bos, United States.
Significance:
While spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is a preferred form of OCT imaging, sensitivity roll-off limits its applicability for certain biomedical imaging applications.
Aim:
The aim of this work is to extend the imaging range of conventional SD-OCT systems for imaging large luminal organs such as the gastrointestinal tract.
Approach:
We present an SD-OCT system operating at a center wavelength of 1300 nm that uses two delayed reference arms to reduce sensitivity roll-off and an optical switch and a fiber optic delay line to ensure that the interference spectra are acquired from the same sample time window.
Result:
The proposed system was used to image swine colon ex vivo and duodenum in vivo, demonstrating improved image quality due to a ∼14 dB increase in sensitivity at the edges of the ranging depth.
Conclusion:
The proposed system requires modest hardware implementation and is compatible with catheter-based endoscopic helical scanning with enhanced sensitivity for the samples at a distance of ∼6 mm from the zero delay point.
